EarthTalk

Dear EarthTalk: Might another possible source for ethanol be discarded
pastries from bakeries? For that matter, wouldn’t fermenting unsoldbananas, oranges and apples from grocery store produce departments be
able to provide an ample supply of fuel? — Curious in Warren, PA
Food waste is indeed an untapped resource with great potential for
generating energy. Some one third of all food produced around the
world gets discarded uneaten, and environmentalists, energy analysts
and entrepreneurs are beginning to take notice. Diverting even just a
portion of this waste to so-called waste-to-energy (WTE) systems could
free up large amounts of landfill space while powering our vehicles
and heating our homes, and thus putting a significant dent in our
collective carbon footprint. Perhaps that’s why WTE is one of the
fastest growing segments of the world’s quickly diversifying energy
sector.
Currently there are some 800 industrial-scale WTE plants in more than
three dozen countries around the world, and likely thousands of
smaller systems at individual sites. Most employ anaerobic digesters,
which make use of microorganisms to break down and convert organic
waste into a fuel such as biogas, biodiesel or ethanol. With some 70
percent of food waste around the world still going into landfills,
there is a lot of potential feedstock to keep this environmentally
friendly carbon neutral fuel source coming.
“Waste-to-energy doesn’t involve drilling, fracking, or mining, and it
doesn’t rely on scarce and politically-charged resources like oil,”
reports RWL Water Group, an international company that installs water,
wastewater and waste-to-energy systems. The waste from small
slaughterhouses, breweries, dairy farms and coffee shops can power
hundreds of typical homes each day if the infrastructure is in place
to sort, collect and process the flow of organic material.
Navigant Research, which produced the 2012 report “Waste-to-Energy
Technology Markets, which analyzes the global market opportunity for
WTE, expects waste-to-energy to grow from its current market size of
$6.2 billion to $29.2 billion by 2022. “With many countries facing
dramatic population growth, rapid urbanization, rising levels of
affluence, and resource scarcity, waste-to-energy is re-establishing
itself as an attractive technology option to promote low carbon growth
in the crowded renewable energy landscape,” says Navigant’s Mackinnon
Lawrence. “China is already in the midst of scaling up capacity, and
growth there is expected to shift the center of the WTE universe away
from Europe to Asia Pacific.”
The question is whether governments and individuals will make the
effort to support diversion of waste into yet another separate stream.
In areas where such systems are working, individuals are incentivized
to separate out their organic and food waste because it saves them
money on their trash pick-up bills. And bakeries, restaurants, farms,
grocers and other big producers of organic or food waste provide an
endless source of feedstock for WTE systems as well.
“We’re barely scratching the surface of this potential — dumping over
70 percent of the world’s food waste into landfills, rather than
harnessing it for fuel and electricity,” reports RWL. “Over the next
25 years, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent, while global
oil supply dwindles at a rapid pace. Waste-to-energy is an obvious
solution to meet the world’s burgeoning energy demand.”
* * * * *
Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that human overpopulation isn’t such a big
issue any more as numbers are expected to start declining in a few
decades? — Melinda Mason, Boone, IAEver since Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of
Population” in 1798, positing incorrectly that humans’ proclivity for
procreation would exhaust the global food supply within a matter of
decades, population growth has been a hot button issue among those
contemplating humankind’s future. Indeed our very success going forth
and multiplying, paired with our ability to extend our life
expectancy, has meant that we are perpetually pushing the limits of
the resource base that supports us.
When Malthus was worrying about the planet’s “carrying capacity,”
there were only about a billion of us on the planet. Today our
population tops seven billion. While better health care and medicine
along with advances in food production and access to freshwater and
sanitation have allowed us to feed ourselves and stave off many health
ills, some so-called Neo-Malthusians believe we may still be heading
for some kind of population crash, perhaps triggered or exacerbated by
environmental factors related to climate change.
But others are less concerned given projections that world population
will likely start to decline once the world’s less developed nations
urbanize and start lowering their birth rates, as has already happened
in Europe, the U.S., Australia and parts of Asia. For example,
Europe’s “fertility rate” between 2005 and 2010 was just 1.53 live
births per woman (the standard replacement rate to maintain a stable
population is 2.1). Without immigration, Europe’s population would
already be shrinking.
Of course, the immigration that continues to fuel population numbers
in developed countries is coming from somewhere. Indeed, population
numbers are still growing in many of the world’s developing countries,
including the world’s most populous nation, China, and its close
rival, India. Also fertility rates in Africa continue to be among the
highest in the world, as many countries there are growing fast, too.
Poverty and health problems due to poor sanitation, lack of access to
food and water, the low social status of women and other ills continue
to cripple these regions. Overpopulation could plague us indefinitely
if fertility rates don’t drop in these areas, especially as they ramp
up their Western-style development.
Globally, the United Nations estimates that the number of humans
populating the planet in 2100 will range from as few as 6.2
billion—almost a billion less than today—to as many as 15.8 billion on
the high end. Meanwhile, other researchers confirm the likelihood of
world population levels flattening out and starting to decline by 2100
according to the lower UN estimate. To wit, the Austria-based
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently
unveiled research showing that if the world stabilizes at a fertility
rate comparable to that of many European nations today (roughly 1.5),
the global human population will be only half of what it is today by
the year 2200, and only one-seventh by 2300.
It is difficult to say which way the global population pendulum will
swing in centuries to come, given ever-changing cultural, economic and
political attitudes and the development demographics they affect. As
such the jury is still out as to whether human overpopulation will
become a footnote in history or the dominant ill that stands in the
way of all other efforts to achieve sustainability and a kinder,
gentler world.

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